Digital broadcasting services are expected to be major broadcasting services in the future. In the digital broadcasting services, compared-to-conventional analog broadcasting, services that are presented to users, such as interactive functions and multichannel broadcasting, are expected to become dramatically abundant. In addition, television receiving terminals, beginning with their integration with VCR or DVD systems, have increasingly become sophisticated every year.
Meanwhile, in order for a user to fully utilize such abundant services or sophisticated functions, TV receiving sets are desired to achieve operational interfaces by which the user can easily select desired functions.
As a method of a user's selecting desired functions from a lot of function menus appropriately (by fewer operational steps, and without requiring background information), as described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 270236/2000, a method of selecting desired functions by displaying a GUI (graphical user interface) screen on a TV receiving set screen has been conceived.
However, regarding an image display device, situations in which the user has to carry out menu selection while checking the condition of the underlying image often occur. With conventional technologies in such cases, because the display area for the underlying image is used for displaying menus, the user cannot check the condition of the underlying image. Accordingly, it has been required to repeat operations in which the user selects a menu, checks the condition of the underlying image after the menu operation screen is erased, and if it is not a desired result, the user displays the menu screen again to select the menu, and then again checks the underlying screen. The present invention aims to resolve such problems.